Bob & Bob
50 Years of Art | lost and found
March 21 – May 9, 2026
Opening Reception: March 21, 4–6PM
Artist Talk: April 18, 2PM
In 1975, two young students met in a class called Painting Attitudes at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Their instructor was the satirical and fierce critic of American consumerist culture, Llyn Foulkes; his position at the school being no small irony given the fact that Art Center was famously known for teaching automobile design. Their engagement with Foulkes was liberating and they were eager to detour from the track of traditional commercial success to one of rebellion. Not only was the fine art world too conceptual and disconnected from most people’s lives, it was humorless and took itself too seriously. Thus, the artistic duo of Bob & Bob was born, their name chosen for its “everyman” common identity, and their irreverent performances, music, films and visual art focused on mocking the very art establishment in which they thrived. Absurdist jokes intended to turn the world upside down recalled the strategies of nonsense and ridicule employed by the Dadaists, but their work was chronologically parallel to Punk Rock, sharing this movement’s sense of upheaval and disruption. Bob & Bob, however, were not mohawked, leathered and chained, but took their stylistic cues from the zany antics and comedic barbs of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. They rented office space in Beverly Hills, wearing suits and ties, getting themselves into trouble, and making paintings of gruesome bankers that recall George Grosz. As Linda Frye Burnham wrote, Beverly Hills “teamed with everything that puzzled, frightened, confused, amused and angered them. Here they felt they could keep watch over shifting values, consumer waste, the high price of sex appeal and the idylls of the famous.” In an act of playful defiance, they lounged on webbed lawn chairs wearing swim trunks and sunglasses in a performance titled Rodeo Beach. In fact, Bob & Bob were part of a larger performance art community that has become recognized as one of key components of LA art history. Along with Bob & Bob, artists such as Chris Burden, Suzanne Lacy, Cheri Gaulke, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Rachel Rosenthal, Barbara T. Smith and the Kipper Kids invented a dynamic West Coast version of performance art perhaps more abject and dangerous than East Coast theatricality and dance. This significant and groundbreaking period was contemporaneously chronicled in High Performance Magazine, edited by Linda Frye Burnham and Steve Durland. In recognition of the importance of performance art, Samuel Vasquez founded the first museum dedicated to this art form in 2023 and is currently seeking a brick and mortar space in Los Angeles. The Performance Art Museum will feature the legendary contributions of Bob & Bob who were recently honored with an award event hosted by the museum and High Performance.
The exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery titled, Bob & Bob: 50 years of Art | lost and found will focus on the duo’s collaborative works on paper and include a media room with a large monitor running vintage reels of their performance work as well as a vitrine of related ephemera. A gallery talk with Bob & Bob will be moderated by Craig Krull on April 18 at 2PM. Their work is in the permanent collections of LACMA, MOCA, The Getty and MOMA. The archives of Bob & Bob reside at the Smithsonian.